Games of Future Past / Planning my next game

I'm running a successful campaign at the moment, which obviously means that I'm thinking about what I want to run next.

I've been toying with a few plot ideas and potential settings for different games for awhile now, and suddenly have hope that I'll be able to run them.

I'm probably getting a bit giddy...

The games are:

Trail of Cthulhu
The first Gumshoe game I bought, and a work of beautiful genius. It successfully evokes multiple interpretations of Lovecraft's work, from the pulp two fisted tales of dark adventure to the doomed and weak minded soul not long for this world with the tenacious and fearful academic somewhere in between.
I have an idea for a game that draws upon The Mountains of Madness and Call of Cthulhu for mood and theme and a real life lost Arctic expedition for setting. I've already started mentally mapping out this idea. It's a strong contender.

Trinity
Originally released as Aeon and soon to be re-released under that name, Trinity is the game from the Aeon Trilogy that I have played the least and have the most books for.
I think I ran a short one shot game for two players back in 2001/2.
It's a game that deserves another crack of the whip - a mix of epic sci-fi, space opera, cyberpunk, post apocalyptic wasteland, Starship Troopers, intrigue and horror. You can set the equalisers to any level you want just by varying the locations and organisations involved.
I'd run a vanilla Aeon Trinity game with a mix of investigation, combat and political manoeuvring.

Hunter: the Vigil
I think of all the World of Darkness games, H:tV has the broadest appeal. Used to playing the monsters in the other games? Have fun playing the other side for once. Never played a WoD game before? Here's a no nonsense gateway to the setting. Not sure about playing a monster? Play a legit human instead.
I was running a nWoD cops game when Hunter: the Vigil announced, and it quickly became apparent that I was running a proto hunter game.
When I finally got it I ran a short introductory story arc for my gaming group, then promptly got my wife pregnant again so had to scale back my gaming for awhile.
I've still got a load of unused ideas that I'd like to try out, and my wife bought me the Compacts & Conspiracies splatbook for my birthday, so it's fresh in my mind.

Ars Magica
My first gaming love. The second game I ever played, the first game I ran. Over the years I've built up and lost a sizable ArM library. I had about 20+ books for 2nd, 3rd and 4th edition, some of which are probably worth a bit of money now, and stupidly gave them all away to charity when the 5th edition came out. To make matters worse, 5th edition wasn't what I wanted it to be, and I gave up on it.
A few years and a bit of perspective later I realised that I wasn't giving it a chance. Different doesn't mean bad. And it couldn't be as much of a disappointment as Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition.
So I'd like to run Ars Magica again.

Changeling: the Lost
Look, this game is fucking brilliant. Really. It's the most well rounded game that White Wolf has ever produced. It's beautiful, horrific, terrifying, paranoid, innocent, brave, redemptive and compelling. It's everything good about folk tales and myths and everything good about modern horror.
It's the best Slender Man pictures meets Pan's Labyrinth meets The Evil Dead.
As I see it, Changeling: the Lost is a game about self discovery and personal agency - freed slaves learning that they can do anything they want, and trying to work out what that actually is, whilst fighting to preserve that freedom.

Mage: the Awakening/Mage Noir
It's hard to get a grip on Mage: the Awakening, to definitively say "this is what the game is about", especially when compared to its predecessor, Mage: the Ascension.
In Ascension it was explicit within the setting that you were caught up in an ideological, metaphysical war with clearly defined sides and an achievable goal. Awakening lacks this direction and forces the players to determine what they want to do and who they have to fight to do it.
The rules are great though. They allow the player characters to bend reality to their will and do a truly impressive range of miracle working.
If running Mage: the Awakening I'd use the Mage Noir setting and play in post war America, late 40s to early 50s, with the players hunting down magical artifacts like an arcane Maltese Falcon.

Pathfinder
Every now and then I have an urge to run a good old fashioned high fantasy dungeon bash.
So far I've primarily used Pathfinder to run Goblin games, because Goblins are ace. The Goblin games I've run so far have been independent of each other but set in the same game world, so the events of the first game (slaughtering a farmer and his family, burning their house down and eating the livestock) informed the second (humans try to drive the Goblins out of the area, Goblins retaliate by setting fire to what they think is a religious monument but is in fact a signal beacon) and the second will inform the third (possible war due to the sudden amassing of an army after an invasion has been signaled).
In every game, though, the players have basically been looking for food and tribal status.

Building a geek / My five games

To steal an idea from Character Generation, here are the five RPGs that made me the colossal geek I am today...

Cyberpunk 2020
I've no idea what edition it was, and I've barely played it since, but Cyberpunk was the first RPG I played. I got snowed in at a friends house one February night, and a Cyberpunk cops one shot was the only entertainment on offer.
I had no idea what I was doing. It made no sense. I tried to 'make a cop'. This was acceptable. I bought a pair of bongo drums and was suddenly told 'now you're getting it'.
I wasn't sure that I was.
I still have no idea what happened. I can presume that a law was broken, and we started shooting. I could handle shooting. I understood 'kill him before he kills you'.
What I didn't understand was that I couldn't shoot through the solid concrete wall that I was using as cover. Before having at least two limbs blown off, I did manage to shoot through the wall, through a car door and through his armour. I did the smallest possible amount of damage the system allowed. It's entirely possible the GM just fudged that to give the newbie a break.
Then I got detonated.

From that point I was hooked.
I didn't quite understand what had just happened, but I did grasp the concept that this RPG thing allowed you to do literally anything you could imagine.
Mind. Blown.

Ars Magica
I played a few more games with this group - Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia - but the one that stuck was Ars Magica. Again, I totally didn't get it. I may have only 'gotten it' sometime in the last two years (16 years and two editions later), but it fired me up some more.
Three different classes of characters under my control.
Magic!
Mid fantasy setting.
Stuff I could learn about without buying the book (Latin, history, folklore, however this did turn out to be my ArM undoing. I worried too much about authenticity).
My first characters were based on Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin, a Merinita magus, Hobbes, Moorish were-tiger companion, and Spiff, a daring grog.
Yeah, I didn't get it. There's a theme running through this.
But I loved Ars Magica. I was enraged that the Tremere were a vampire clan in V:tM. I hated that the Order of Hermes was reduced to just one of nine Traditions in M:tAs.
Yet I've never successfully played it or run it. I always get bogged down in historical accuracy and my fear of the finer points of the rules.
I hope to change that.

Vampire: the Masquerade revised
It's with V:tM rev that I became a GM. I hated the game I was playing, basically because the Storyteller was focussing entirely upon the story, at the expense of the rules and player expectations.
Rules were only ever used to tell us we couldn't do something, not to tell us how we could do something. They were applied inconsistently and unfairly.
It really pissed me off.
So I bought the Revised Edition and a shed load of supplements and set out to show him how a game of Vampire should be run.
Not that I did a brilliant job. I did ok, for a novice Storyteller. I got better.
I think.

Song of Steel LARP club
Ok, not a table top RPG, a Live-Action one instead. I played the pilot game in February 1998 (i think it was then) and finally left in early 2003. In the five years I was there I spent three on the Plot team, writing and running adventures, two months as Club Secretary (I was shit, and quit) and a year as Head of the Rules Team. It was the rules position that broke me, and I was totally burned out after it.
Positives, though. I spent three years exploring various adventure ideas, and towards the end had a good idea of what I was good at, what worked and what didn't, through trial and error. Which means I fucked up a lot, but learnt a little from each mistake. My major error was over reaching, and the best adventures I ran were simple, low resource ones.

World of Darkness Storytelling System
This is what I'm best at. When White Wolf rebooted, I completely ditched all of my old Storyteller games and fully embraced the new WoD.
Yes, I regret giving my 100+ books to charity, mostly because the shop that got them probably didn't know what they had, because it was a rash decision, because there were some gems that I should have kept.
But I totally get nWoD. It's second nature to me. I don't have to think about the rules or the setting, I just kind of default to it. It frees me up to enjoy the game and what the players are doing.

My love has changed, should I take her back? / Giving Ars Magica another chance

The first game I ever played was _cyberpunk_. It was pretty cool and introduced me to the world of RPGs.
The second game I played was _Ars Magica_. I was terrible at it. I didn't get it. Not really. I treated it in much the same way people treat D&D when they start.
But, God, I loved it.
I loved it so much that I refused to even look at Mage: the Ascension for years, and dismissed the Tremere in Vampire: the Masquerade until Revised Edition.

I played 3rd Ed to begin with, and when I went to University I found that a 4th Edition was out, and began collecting that in earnest.
One of my best friends in the Gaming Society also loved ArM, and amazingly gave me some of his 2nd Edition books.
Mythic Places.
More Mythic Places.
The Order of Hermes.
The Pact of Pasaquine.

I tried running it several times, to varied success. Again, I didn't get it, and failed to explain it properly to the players.

I hope I get it now.
I think its about the Covenant.

When ArM5 came out, I made the (stupid) decision to ditch everything that had gone before and focus entirely upon this new Edition.
It was supposed to be better.
I had faith in David Chart.

Faith I had misplaced.
David Chart is a serious academic, and, in my opinion, has trouble producing 'light' material.
I found ArM5 hard going.
I found it focussed on some elements of the game to the exclusion of others.
The Combat section is dispensed with as rapidly as possible so the book can move onto the 'more important' sections of the game.
There are mathematical formulae at every turn.
It's very dense and in no way welcoming to the casual or new Gamer.
It is a for people who already play Ars Magica.

Recently, though, I have been reading Dark Horse Game Design's blog. He's recently discovered ArM, managed to get past the text and discover the game at its heart.

I am now wondering if I have been too harsh. Have I pushed away a game I love because I don't like its current edition.

God, am I having an Edition Wars moment?

Games come, games go / Clearing out

I have a gaming dilemma. I have caused it myself.
I have suddenly decided that I should have a clear out of my gaming books. Get rid off the stuff I'm never going to use and don't want to keep.
I know, it sounds like madness. It is madness. I know it is. I still regret throwing out all my old World of Darkness, Exalted 1st edition and Ars Magica 4th Edition books. I regret throwing out my D&D 3.5 books.
I got rid of all of these books because I made the conscious decision to go all in with the new editions.

This proved to be a mistake with Exalted, D&D and Ars Magica, as I really do not like the new systems. I dislike them so much that I am now considering ditching these games.

To be completely clear, I am thinking about selling, trading, gifting or simply binning my Exalted 2nd Ed, Ars Magica 5th Ed and Dungeons & Dragons 4th Ed books.

• Ars Magica 5th Edition
• Exalted 2nd Edition core rules
• Exalted 2nd Edition storytellers screen
• Exalted 2nd Edition storytellers companion
• Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Players Handbook
• Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Dungeon Masters Guide
• Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Monster Manual
• Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition DM Screen
• Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide

The overriding reason why i'm thinking of getting rid of these games is that I can't get behind the systems.
I don't like the 'everything is a power' thing in D&D 4th ed. It works for Wizards, but not for Rogues or Fighters. Whatever happened to just hitting someone with your sword?
The 2nd Ed rules in Exalted just hurt my head. It's like they were made deliberately complicated and obtuse and ridiculous.
Ars Magica 5th Ed may be a more viable system than 4th Ed, i'll give it that, but I really don't like what they've done to the setting and layout. It's too dry. There's no excitement or flavour, just dust.

I'm not shedding a tear about Exalted or Ars Magica, but I am oddly reluctant to leave D&D behind. I don't have any other game like it - the classic level/class based fantasy quest growing from barely competent chancers through seasoned adventurers to epic godlike heroes.
As a result, I find myself considering Pathfinder. So much so that I've just cleansed my Amazon wishlist.

So, two questions to you all out there:

1. Want to buy some books? All in excellent condition except the Exalted second edition, which has some interior spine damage.
2. Should I invest in Pathfinder? Is it any good? Does it actually improve on D&D 3.5?

The longview

[I found this draft post in my list, which I started, God, months ago. Hell, may as well post it]

Earlier today I was reading the Wikipedia entry for Pendragon, which states:

"...campaigns often carry over across generations, with players retiring their character and taking the role of that character's heir. This is quite different from most role-playing games, where one set of characters is played fairly intensively, and there is typically little consideration made of what happens to their family or descendants. The influence of this idea can be seen in the Ars Magica RPG, which also encourages stories taking years or decades to unfold..."

Which got me thinking - Should there be more games that focus on the long view? I can think of number of computer games that do - Populous, Black & White, Settlers et al. Games where the main premise is to develop a tribe into an empire, through technological and cultural change and compete against other similar tribes.

So why aren't there many RPGs with a similar focus? Pendragon follows a quest through generations, and Ars Magica develops the PCs Covenant, why don't we see games that do the same?

The best game I never played

Geek books are like crack. I see them. I want them. I do morally repulsive things to get them. Then, after I have them, and the euphoric buzz has faded, I feel a little guilty and maybe regret the purchase.
I can normally rationalise the purchase away though...
It's well written, so it's like buying a regular book
It's a good system that's got me thinking, so it's a mental exercise, which is good
Oh, I will use it, it's fucking awesome

Then, months or years later you look at your book shelf and realise that the literally hundreds of pounds you've spent could have gone on something more worthwhile, because you've never used the damn things.

Example
When my wife moved in, I showed willing and cleared out a load of my old RPG books. I sold off about 30 Mage: The Ascension books that I had never used.
I gave away about 15 Exalted books, 6 Orpheus books, 20+ Vampire: The Masquerade books, 1 Mummy: The Resurrection book, 20+ Ars Magica books and 4 Hunter: The Reckoning books that I had never used.

One of the rationalisations i used was that I was clearing house of everything I didn't use and was never going to use again.
I would start again.
Rebuild.

As of now, I have 22 New World of Darkness books, including core rule books, most of which I have never used. I've not used Mage, Vampire, Changeling and a number of supplements.
I have Ars Magica 5th Edition, which I have never used.
I have Exalted 2nd Edition, which i have never used.
I have Trail of Cthulhu, Fear Itself and Star Wars Saga Edition. I've not used any of them.

This is kind of depressing. A lot of these are great games (the exceptions being ArM5 and Exalted 2, which appear to piss all over the previous, stronger, editions).

Unfortunately i don't see an opportunity in the near future for play either, which is a real shame.

I'd really love to do something with Changeling: The Lost, which is a really rich game chock full of opportunities and creativity.
I have about three or four Star Wars games I could run, and could pull off a respectable Vampire: The Requiem game.
I think i'd prefer to play Mage instead of run it.

Now, if only my children would age about 5 years, i'd have a bit more time...

Pedigree / verdigris

The purpose of this post is to magically transform me from a random voice in the 'blogosphere' into somebody who somebody else might want to listen to (whether or not it's an authoritive voice is a matter for further posts and individual opinion)

Let me know how I do...

If you're into formal qualifications, then I have a Diploma of Higher Education in Literature and Creative Writing. I should have a BA (hons), but decided to drink beer and chase girls in my final year instead of doing work.
To be honest, all i've done with my creative writing training is run games and write dungeons.

Whilst at Uni I got involved in Live-Action Role Play (LARP or LRP). It was a 'mud and beer' club, which means that you resolved conflict by picking up a foam/rubber sword and whacking your antagonist with it. They also whacked you back, so that's alright.
I spent about three years writing adventures, or linears, for the club. The basic format of a linear adventure was about 8 encounters, mostly fighting with one or two talking encounters, that progressed in a, you know, linear fashion to a predetermined goal.
So, basically like a computer game. An example that leaps to mind is Resident Evil 4. You can explore certain larger areas, but essentially there's only one way forward.
I have fond memories of running these adventures.
I eventually left the club after dropping my writing duties to be 'just another player', and discovering that I didn't really enjoy playing as much as I did writing.

I've been playing table top RPG since being snowed in at a friends house in Feb 1996. The first game I played was Cyberpunk, followed by Ars Magica and Paranoia (not all on teh same night, though).
I was made aware of Vampire and Mage around that time, and remember being unaccountably annoyed that The Order of Hermes and the Tremere were included in those games as options rather than the main focus.
When I got to Uni, though, the only games on offer were Vampire: the Masquerade and Changeling: the Dreaming. Mage: the Ascension reared its head once as well.
I started playing a Vampire game, and quickly discovered how a game can go wrong.

I started running games simply because the guy that normally ran them was, in my opinion, a moron. I could do better, I thought. I can show him how it should be done.
I did ok. Not great. Ok.

Since then i've run Vampire: tM, Mage:tAs, In Nomine, Ars Magica, Adventure!, Star Wars d20, D&D 3.5 and 4, Exalted, Aberrant, Trinity, basic World of Darkness, Hunter: The Reckoning, Orpheus and now Hunter: The Vigil.
All to an Ok standard. I think.

I currently play with a weekly group in my local town.
Most of them like old school D&D or Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. They recently played Cyberpunk, which went down well.